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Monday, December 20, 2010

How To Make Extra Money Online - 5 Ways To Generate Extra Online Income

In this day and age, the economy being in the sad state that it is, we are always wondering how to make extra money. Thankfully, the Internet provides us with a seemingly endless line of opportunities to make extra money. These ideas range from a college student who wants to learn how to make some extra money, all the way up to someone who wants to get wealthy from their online business ventures. Regardless of your overall goals, most of these opportunities are zero start up cost. I will list 10 of them now.

Article Marketing

Also called "bum marketing" because you can get started for free and still make darn good money. Articles are a great way to setup residual income that will bring you affiliate sales even after years from now. This is gaining in popularity more everyday. Articles are a great way for search engines to find a site, so writing articles for an affiliate, and then promoting those articles, can earn you substantial profits. If you are trying to find out how to make extra money fast, then article marketing would likely not be your best choice. It takes a while for things to get going.

Ebay

If you have access to products that have a good demand on Ebay, you can start a very profitable Ebay business. The key here is in the products that you sell, and your ability to get them on a regular basis, no matter how big you get. This is what stops most Ebay people from becoming huge Powersellers. They just don't have the product sources. Don't believe any of the drop shipping gibberish either, dealing with them is a royal pain; out of stock refunds happen constantly, plus you are usually competing with the distributor yourself, so it is a lost cause.

Content Sites

This is similar to article marketing but instead of submitting your writing to an article directory and hoping to get money from the ads later on, you would instead write requested content pieces for sites like Associated Content, Constant Content, and Demand Studios on a per assignment basis. You can earn up to $15.00 per article upfront. These sites are called "content mills" because they supply assembly line generated content to their publishers. There is a big difference between writing for an article directory and writing for the content mills though. The content mills have very specific style guidelines that they require you to follow or they decline your content and you have to resubmit it later.

Virtual Assistant

If you have the ability to work from home on the web on a regular basis, and you have Microsoft Office skills, then you could easily find work as a Virtual Assistant online. Think of it as remote secretarial work, you handle files, field phone calls, and whatever else is asked of you. You can do this two ways, by either responding to job ads and offering your services exclusively, or you can go to a project management site like ODesk and sign-up for an account. Once you have an account, you start browsing through the services needed section to see what projects people need done for a certain amount of money. For example, maybe Joe needs you to fill out medical forms for his clients, maybe he offers a dollar per completed form. You would then bid on the job, just like Ebay auctions, and after doing a few projects, will gain your reputation level to where you can get even more project offers.

Blogging

Many people have started their own blog in an attempt to generate extra income. Although it is definitely not a get rich quick kind of thing, I don't know of anything that is, really. With hard work, you could do very well with your own blog, but just like everything else online, the only way you can make money is by getting traffic and lots of it. If you can get traffic, then you can pretty much do anything to turn it into money.

One thing about working online is effort and work ethic. If you are lazy, then none of the above options are for you. Most people work for about 3 months solid before seeing any meaningful return. If you are someone who thinks of your labor in terms of hours, then it would be wise to lose that philosophy. Many times you will find yourself spending hours on end at the computer and accomplishing absolutely nothing. That is just the way it goes sometimes, you need to put the hours in to see the money. Kind of like real life too isn't it?